Perl substitute replace white space width maintain

[Sangal-Arun]

I have a file that looks like this:

fv09 fv09-dev 5 y GRPLOAD V NONE 14 # fv09-Release
jul0809 jul0809-dev 5 y GRPLOAD V NONE 14 # jul0809-Release
jul2209 jul2209-dev 5 y GRPLOAD V NONE 14 # jul2209-Release


Now I need to replace string "NONE" with another string like "09/01/01:01:01". Now I can easily make this happened by doing :

$tmp = "09/01/01:01:01";

$str =~ s/NONE/$tmp/ ;

Now by doing this this will give me an output like :

fv09 fv09-dev 5 y GRPLOAD V NONE 14 # fv09-Release
jul0809 jul0809-dev 5 y GRPLOAD V 09/01/01:01:01 14 # jul0809-Release
jul2209 jul2209-dev 5 y GRPLOAD V NONE 14 # jul2209-Release


Which is more whie spaces after the value when I replace NONE (Assuming that I'm only changing the second line not all the lines)

But I want something like

fv09 fv09-dev 5 y GRPLOAD V NONE 14 # fv09-Release
jul0809 jul0809-dev 5 y GRPLOAD V 09/01/01:01:01 14 # jul0809-Release
jul2209 jul2209-dev 5 y GRPLOAD V NONE 14 # jul2209-Release


For doing this if I write command like :

$str =~ s/NONE /$tmp/ ;

THat didn't work because in my file I don't know whether I have tab/spaces etc after string "NONE"

[tpl]

> tabs or spaces after NONE

well, how about changing such tabs as may be, to spaces?
If yr file is "f" then

sed 's/\t/ /g' <f

should replace each tab on a line, with a space. Then proceed
as before.